Osun: Adeleke freezes govt accounts, reverses Oyetola’s appointments

The new governor of Osun State Ademola Adeleke on Sunday reversed all appointments made by his predecessor Gboyega Oyetola.

In his augural address on Sunday, Adeleke, a former senator, said the immediate past governor took many decisions in its last days in office, which the state had no funds to sustain.

He, therefore, ordered that all actions taken by the past government since the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared him the winner of the July 16 gubernatorial poll in the state be reviewed with immediate effect.

Adeleke said Oyetola maliciously started “mounting roadblocks” to make things difficult and almost impossible for him since the All Progressives Congress (APC) lost the governorship election in the state.

“Mass employments were carried out without budgetary provisions for salary payments for the new employees, even when the state was struggling to pay salaries and deliver other services. Various hurried and criminally backdated contracts were awarded and again without budgetary provisions.”

“Appointments of several Obas were hurriedly done without following due process, just to mention a few. All efforts to get the governor to set up a transition committee and submit hand-over notes in line with best practices proved abortive.”

While promising to provide good governance and take the state to an enviable height, he urged the residents to be patient with his government for a few weeks to enable it to review and sort out all the actions of the immediate past government since July 17th and chart a new way forward.

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Adeleke also made the following orders:

Immediate freezing of all government accounts in banks and other financial institutions.

Immediate establishment of a panel to carry out an inventory and recover all government assets.

Immediate establishment of a panel to review all appointments and major decisions of the immediate past administration taken after the 17th July, 2022.

Immediate reversal to the constitutionally recognised name of the state, Osun State.

He directed that all government insignia, correspondences and signages must reflect Osun State rather than the State of Osun, which he said was unknown to the Nigerian Constitution.

Recalls that the immediate past governor, Adegboyega Oyetola appointed 30 permanent secretaries two days before the end of his tenure.

Similarly, the former governor approved the appointment of monarchs for ten communities in the state, including Ikirun town, where there has been mayhem since the announcement was made.

Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, who led the state between 2010 and 2018, changed the name of Osun State to the State of Osun.